Entering the Home Stretch

Around 3,500 votes have now been cast in our Best American Novel poll. It’s striking how little change there has been since close to the beginning. The top four or five haven’t changed; Huckleberry Finn, not surprisingly, enjoys a comfortable lead. Based on our email traffic, I suspect that the only way Huck could have been challenged is if we had included Atlas Shrugged.

We’ll probably shut off voting before too long, so if you want to try to rescue Henry James from the cellar–why, I can’t imagine, but someone might want to do this–now’s the time to go to Power Line News and vote. Likewise if you care whether My Antonia noses out Fahrenheit 451, or The Long Goodbye beats The Scarlet Letter–it’s got my vote–or whether The Age of Innocence, which is anything but innocent, beats The Sot-Weed Factor, which is the least innocent of them all, notwithstanding its protagonist’s commitment to that concept, you can cast a final ballot.

In short, check out the standings, and if you want to support any book or genre, this is your chance!